Andrew’s Reviews > Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion > Status Update

By contrast with religion, atheism is prone to seem coldly impatient with our neediness.

We had to pretend that morality came from the heavens in order to insulate it from our own prevarications and frailties.

A lack of freedom is no longer, in most developed countries, the problem. Our downfall lies in our inability to make the most of the freedom our ancestors painfully secured over three centuries. ... We face temptations which we revile in those interludes when we can attain sufficient distance from them, but which we lack any encouragement to resist, much to our eventual self disgust and disappointment.